Interesting Links for 27-11-2024

[andrewducker]

1. How Murderbot Saved Martha Wells' Life (and got her nominated for a bunch of awards)

(tags:scifi murder robots )

2. Bluesky boom worries Chinese media

(tags:socialnetworking china )

3. The Five Stages of Processing a New Star Wars Announcement

(tags:StarWars Disney movies video )

4. Earth has tilted by 31.5 inches and humans are to blame - pumping 2 trillion tons of groundwater

(tags:water earth doom )

Comments

[ninetydegrees]

I almost want to make a Bluesky account. It seems they have a good moderation/support system. We'll see how it fares as numbers grow.

[errolwi]

My main concern is what they will become, once the demands for money flowing to the owners get more strident.

[andrewducker]

Giving the power to individuals seems to be working quite well so far.

[jducoeur]

I'm primarily on Mastodon, but have set up a Bluesky account and am fleshing out my network there. (And have bridged by Mastodon account over to Bluesky so that folks there can follow me, and on Mastodon I'm following several major Bluesky users who have bridged over to that.) It doesn't need to be strictly either/or, depending on how much effort you're willing to put in.

Empirically, I think Bluesky is "winning" in terms of mindshare (mainly because the meme of "Mastodon is too hard", while badly exaggerated, has established itself quite deeply); if I was laying money down, I'd say that they are likely to be more successful in the medium term. But their lack of any clear business model, combined with the level of investment they've taken, means that they are extremely susceptible to enshittification, so I'm cautious about their long-term prospects.